


lights will guide you home

by Theonenamedafterahat



Series: a promise kept [1]
Category: Lost in Space (TV 2018)
Genre: ANGST but then fluff!, Fake Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:14:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22427641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theonenamedafterahat/pseuds/Theonenamedafterahat
Summary: Maureen doesn’t have nightmares, she has her memory. Since settling on this planet — since everything that proceeded it — she has endured repeated, vivid dreams of arriving back at the Jupiter 2 with Smith and Judy to find Penny and Will there alone, confirming that Smith had for once been telling the truth. That John’s ship had been lost, that Judy and Penny had seen it with their own eyes, that nothing had been heard from John since, despite Will continuing to carry that radio…Her intelligence has no mercy, least of all on her. She knows exactly how John must have felt, in the moments before his death. When Maureen looks up at the sky on any one of a hundred nondescript early mornings, her unrelenting brain reminds her of every single decision she had taken that lead to John’s death — of how completely and totally she is to blame.
Relationships: John Robinson/Maureen Robinson
Series: a promise kept [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1614040
Comments: 16
Kudos: 48





	lights will guide you home

Maureen is in the garage when Judy calls for her.

It’s uncomfortably quiet on their Jupiter, now that the oxygen-generating system is the only one still running. It’s almost dead, drained of any meaningful amount of power. Even given optimal conditions to use their solar cells, it would still take years to save enough power to take off. The air itself on this planet could be used as fuel. The tanks could be full within an hour. But what good would it do?

None at all.

It’s Christmas Eve, and she is hiding from the only people on this world, or any other, that she loves, and she’s doing it because there is nothing else she can do for them. She can keep them alive, but other than that, she’s as useless as every other system on this useless ship.

What good is living if there is no future? What good is _she_ if she can’t give it to them?

So Maureen is in the garage, the quiet hum of the oscillograph her only company, and she doesn’t know if her children are together or alone, if they’re sleeping, if they are having nightmares. Judy says she doesn’t have nightmares; Penny says she is lying. Will won’t talk to either of the girls about it, and Maureen won’t ask him herself because she doesn’t think she could stand to hear him telling her yet again how wrong they all are, how great a mistake they made, how John is still —

Maureen doesn’t have nightmares, she has her memory. Since settling on this planet — since everything that proceeded it — she has endured repeated, vivid dreams of arriving back at the Jupiter 2 with Smith and Judy to find Penny and Will there alone, confirming that Smith had for once been telling the truth. That John’s ship had been lost, that Judy and Penny had seen it with their own eyes, that nothing had been heard from John since, despite Will continuing to carry that radio…

Her intelligence has no mercy, least of all on her. She knows exactly how John must have felt, in the moments before his death. When Maureen looks up at the sky on any one of a hundred nondescript early mornings, her unrelenting brain reminds her of every single decision she had taken that lead to John’s death — of how completely and totally she is to blame.

Maureen wonders if, in the moments before his death, John had time to realise. If, as his body was ripped apart in the upper atmosphere of some planet they never bothered to name, he knew that it was her fault.

He must have. It’s no more, no worse, than she deserves.

Grant Kelly was a colleague, and one who she had given up on when he chose to abandon her and her unborn child to go into space. She had grieved his death more for Judy’s sake than her own. His absence from her life was regrettable, but inevitable — expected, even.

That is to say, Maureen has no experience with grief of this kind. For the first time in her life, she has encountered a problem without a solution. She has carried on, she has done what needed to be done. She has provided her children with food and safety. She eats and sleeps, studying the engine because if there is any hope to be found in this place, then that’s where she will find it, she’s certain. She is empty; she’s unmoored. She has no plan; the only hope she can find is for her children. She will get them out of this place, and give them the better life that she promised them, that John died for.

The prospect of flying through space had always filled her with joy. Now it is only a means to an end.

And then she hears Judy’s shout.

——

John was a variable she had never considered.

Maureen had lived an entire life before him, had already known herself and her needs. She hadn’t been pregnant long, but was already certain that she would have no problem raising the child alone. In some ways, she considered that an optimal arrangement.

She had resigned herself to her apparent inability to relate to her peers, to form the kind of friendships and connections that everyone else seemed to gain with such ease. John changed everything. Within days, she was closer to him than she was to any living person. Within weeks, she had trusted him with the knowledge of her pregnancy. He had been the first person in her life who hadn’t blamed Maureen for her fractious relationship with her mother, including herself, and he had been there for her when she told her mother about Judy.

He had been the answer to a question she hadn’t even known to ask. His presence made everything so much easier.

He loved her. She was certain of it then, and she is certain of it now. He loved her, and he always had — through the silence, the calls she refused to take while he was fighting in some distant hellhole, the long nights in a bed they were forced to share in order for John to qualify to join their family group on the trip to Alpha Centauri.

The truth is this: she was always going to forgive him. From the moment he returned, bags already packed for the Resolute, it was an inevitability.

She loved him, and he loved her, and they could have been happy together, if only she had realised that sooner. Another one on the long list of mistakes that she will never be forgiven for.

It’s her nature to focus on a problem until she has a solution, to go over every part of it until she finds clarity. Now, she is the problem. Whenever she is unoccupied, a constant litany of mistakes runs through her mind.

_I put John on that ship, even though I knew it wasn’t safe._

_It’s my fault he died._

_I let Smith into my family, I gave her access to our ship. It’s my fault she was able to kidnap me and stop me from helping John._

_It’s my fault he died._

_I decided to send Don up there with John. I should have gone with him myself. I could have done something to save him if I had been there._

_It’s my fault he died._

_John is dead._

_It’s all my fault._

——

“Mom!”

Maureen is up and moving in the blink of an eye — before she has time to think. There’s no breach alarm, but why would Judy shout like that unless something was wrong?

“Mom!” “Mom!”

Will and Penny too?

Not them. Dear God, she can’t loose them too.

She _won’t_. Not now, not ever. She’ll fight the laws of physics herself, if that’s what it takes to keep her children.

There are still no alarms, but that thought is nothing compared to the panic sweeping through her, making her run to the cockpit and grab the first child she sees — Penny; Maureen clutches her, frantically checking for injuries, anything that would have caused them to shout for her like their lives depended on it — but Penny isn’t hurt, she isn’t even upset...

Penny is smiling.

No, more than that; Penny is _laughing_.

And then Judy’s arms are around her neck, and that must be Judy because Will is standing in front of her, practically vibrating with excitement, and they are laughing too, joy on their faces like nothing Maureen has seen in all the time they have been stranded on this planet —

“Mom,” Penny says, traces of laughter still in her words, in the way her eyes are shining, “Look!”

They are safe, all of them. They are happy. Maureen allows herself just a moment to truly accept that, before turning as they direct her to look out of the window, and seeing something she had thought she would never see again.

_“Jupiter 11 to Maureen Robinson,”_ a voice comes from her radio, and it takes everything she has not to let her knees buckle. _“Maureen Robinson, please respond.”_

She can’t breathe in here. Is the OGS failing them now, after all this time? No, it can’t be — there would be alarms — and yet…

“I’m here!” Maureen gasps. “We’re here!”

There’s a rush of static — feedback — and then:

_“I cannot tell you how glad I am to hear that,”_ Naoko Wantanabe says, and Judy is crying, Penny and Will are shouting, dancing, throwing their arms up in the air and cheering, but even all the noise they are making can’t drown out the sound of the Jupiter 11’s landing.

Judy is still crying. Maureen pulls her close, lets Judy tuck her face against her neck; doesn’t flinch when Judy wipes wet cheeks against her skin. God, she has never been able to change how she aches when one of her babies is crying. She would never want to.

“They came,” Judy whispers, so quiet that Maureen thinks it’s only audible to her. “They really came.”

_Do not cry,_ Maureen reminds herself. _No matter what, you cannot cry._

_“Maureen,”_ Naoko says, and there’s an unfamiliar note in her voice, one Maureen can’t identify, and now the panic is returning —

_“I have someone onboard who has a very important message for you. For all of you.”_

“What is it?” Penny asks immediately, voice sharp and knuckles white, she’s gripping Will’s shirt so tightly.

Hiroki? It would make sense for him to be with Naoko, since it’s their Jupiter… but then why would Naoko be so cryptic?

Victor is another possibility… but why would he come to save them? Why would he leave his family, and the rest of the survivors? As colony representative, he would have too many responsibilities to join a rescue mission for just one family.

An important person, Naoko said — could it be someone from the upper command of the Resolute?

_“So…”_

Strange, how one word — one familiar voice — can change everything. 

It isn’t John, because it _can’t_ be John — John is dead, he died months ago and it was _all her fault_ because she sent him up there, she _forced_ him to go so it can’t be him, it _can’t_ be his voice that she hears, that voice that she has loved and longed for, that she tried to forget for so long but never could, never would —

It cannot be him. It’s impossible. But then he always was.

_“Who’s my secret Santa?”_

Judy has gone rigid in her arms, Penny’s hand has flown up to cover her mouth, eyes wide, and Will —

Sometimes, as is inevitable for all parents, Maureen doesn’t understand her children. There have been times when she has looked at each of them, and not known what they were thinking, what they were going to do. Almost twenty years of parenthood have taught her that it’s natural, even expected, for a mother to never completely know her child. But even knowing that hasn’t made these past few months easier to bear.

This whole time, Will never lost hope that John was out there. With his conviction shining out of him like light, Maureen sometimes had trouble looking at him. She loves Will, she always has — always will — but these past few months, he has retreated inside himself, and she has let him.

Right now, Will is incandescent. “Dad…” It’s not a question. For him, it never has been. “Dad!”

“Daddy?” God, Penny sounds like she did at three years old, when she wept every time John left the room, and treated his every return as a miracle.

Judy grabs Maureen’s arm, pulls her radio up — “Dad!” She gasps, “Dad, is that you?”

Ridiculous. She’s being ridiculous. Of course it's John — what reason would Naoko have to lie about it? Of course she isn’t loosing her mind — Judy would have done something if she had noticed symptoms of Maureen loosing her grip on reality, and besides that, all the kids clearly heard exactly what she did. If she were thinking logically, she would have no doubts. And yet, she can’t take her eyes off the Jupiter 11, just across the beach from them — so close she could touch it.

John is on that ship. Oh God, “John…”

_“I’m here,”_ He says immediately.

“John,” she says again, which is infuriating, because they’ve been apart for seven months and she thought he was _dead_ and it felt like she had died with him. He deserves to know how much he was missed; she wants to tell him. But she can’t get the words out. She can only say his name, like it’s the only word she knows. “ _John…”_

_“I’m here, guys. I’m coming to get you.”_

——

Maureen had worked out every possible ending to their time here, every probability and variation. She had never imagined this.

John reaches the airlock before any of them can get their suits on to go out and meet him. The kids run forward to throw themselves at him in an echo of that last christmas they spent together back on earth; again, Maureen lags behind. 

She can’t remember why now, but she’s wearing her nightdress. It was probably an attempt to stop Judy from another lecture about the importance of a regular sleep schedule — as if Maureen didn’t know that her behaviour wasn’t healthy.

John’s arms are around the kids, holding them tight to him. He hasn’t even stopped to take his helmet off yet, looks just as he did when she last saw him. Just as she imagined he had on that doomed trip back to the Resolute.

She can’t see his face, and it’s breaking her heart. The thought of that damn suit coming between them yet again — of holding him but not being able to feel his heart beating, not having that tangible proof that he’s alive, that this isn’t all a horrible dream — it’s too much to bear.

“The suit,” she says, in a voice she doesn’t recognise, taking a step towards him because she can’t help herself, but holding back from touching him. “Take off the suit.”

John is handsome, that has always gone without saying. His face is symmetrical, and his body has always been well-defined by his profession as well as his love for running. But the same can be said for many men; John is something more than handsome — John, Maureen decided a long time ago, is beautiful. The way he moves his hands, how he walks and talks, looks over his shoulder, sits at rest and shouts in anger, she loves it all.

On their wedding day, when she’d emerged blinking into the bright light of the ceremony and looked up the aisle to see him standing there, Maureen had felt something go soft and tender inside her. When she'd glanced across to him during the reception, Judy on her lap, to see him staring at them both, she had never seen anything like him, never been drawn to anything like she was to him. It scared her, the thought that she had found something so right, so perfect for her. 

But he was beautiful asleep in their sitting room on Earth, curled under a blanket in fatigues, exhausted from the trip home; he was beautiful when he sat with Penny to help with her homework; he was beautiful when he couldn’t take his eyes off her in that chariot under the tar, when they both thought he was moments away from death, and he was staring at her like he wanted her face to be his final memory.

When he takes off his helmet, Maureen can see deep bruises under his eyes that tell her that he hasn’t been sleeping any more than she has.

He’s lost weight, and his freckles.

He’s so beautiful. Maureen can feel her lower lip trembling.

The gloves come off, then the com pack; Judy and Penny help John lift it over his head, both wiping away tears with their free hands. Will hasn’t stopped talking, but Maureen can’t work out the words; it’s as though she’s a radio tuned to John’s frequency — she can’t hear what the kids are saying, but his every breath is as clear as her own.

Maureen walks towards John as if in a dream; touches him like he’ll disappear if she makes a wrong move. He looks at her like he’s the one in a dream, and Maureen is suddenly struck by the realisation that he must have been so worried about them, so afraid for them.

He must have suffered every bit as much as she had.

She’s resurfacing from water; she’s waking from a nightmare. Everything snaps into focus, and he’s still wearing that _fucking_ flight suit, and she’s going to get it off him _right now._

Her fingers hurt, she yanks the buckles so tightly — she doesn’t care. The front piece of the suit is off in a moment, then the jacket; she shoves it down his arms, exposing his skin, lets it fall to the ground.

“I’m here,” John says. He takes her hand, kisses it, brings it to his chest.

Finally, she can feel him, the warmth of his skin and the proud, steady thump of his heart as it beats beneath her fingers. Then he’s in her arms, and she’s in his, and the kids are there too, all of them tangled up in and around each other.

John pulls back slightly, and lifts one hand to cup her cheek, brushing tears away with his thumb. “I’m here,” he says again, like he’s prepared to say it a hundred times more, as many times as it takes for her to believe it. “I’m here, for as long as you’ll have me.”

If she were a better person, she would ignore the hitch in his breath as he said that; the tears in his eyes, flowing down his cheeks. But she’s tired, and her yearning for him has been an unrelenting ache, and she can’t keep her heart from soaring at the _proof_ that he felt it too; that he has missed her every bit as much as she missed him.

It's all too much, all of it, everything, and at this moment, it's all Maureen can do to press her face into the crook of his neck, clutch at his shoulders and fist a hand in his hair.

She finally allows herself to drop; John catches her before her knees hit the floor, and the kids come with them, all holding each other too tightly to let go.

“I’ve got you,” he says, quiet — these words are just for her, so tender that it makes her ache.

Maureen can hear the roar of blood in her ears and the frantic noise of her heart, the desperate gasps for breath and the creak of John’s boots as he tries to settle them all into a more comfortable position on the floor.

He’s trembling, she realises.

“I’m sorry,” she croaks. “I’m so sorry.”

But that wasn’t all she wanted to say, what it? There was something else, something even more important, something John _needed_ to hear —

The words fall out of her: “I love you. I love you, I love you — I’m so sorry — I love you.”

She says it to the skin of his neck, but he can hear her. She can tell by the hitches in his breath, and the tightening of his arms around her, around their children.

She shouldn’t be crying in front of them. She can’t help it. They’re all weeping together.

He kisses her eventually; once, twice, again and again, each kiss flowing into the next, each equally unwilling to separate, even for a moment.

“I love you too,” he says, when he can. “I love you all, so much. I can’t promise that we’ll never be apart again. But I promise that I will always love you, I will always come for you, and I will always find you.”

“I know,” Maureen tells him, because it’s the truth, because she’ll never doubt him again. “I know you will.”


End file.
